Re: The Rroma ("Gitano", "Gypsy", "Roma"): Diaspora and Origins
worrylesswarrior_at_yahoo.com
Date: 09/28/04
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Date: 28 Sep 2004 08:39:11 -0700
Hello AlexV:
Let me answer your points one-by-one...
>
> A documentary I saw recently about Czechoslovakian/Hungarian gypsy community
> was complementary to what I have already known. Although some of the gypsies
> do settle, kind of, their lifestyle do not seem to be suggestive of their
> intention to put down roots and develop a community for future generations.
> They are almost ready to pick up and move at the slightest notice. The same
> situation was in Russia in many places in Soviet times.
I wonder why they are so nomadic? Is it because they feel
economically and culurally disenfranchised? I do notice that they
have a "rambling man" gene. I see this wanderlust exhibited in
Punjabis, Gujaratis, and Sindhis a lot. They're able to move on far
and wide and park their cars in their host country until another
economic opportunity calls for them.
> They are talented people especially musically and this aspect is appreciated
> by the locals, however, there have always been frictions between the gypsies
> and the latter. They have a reputation for stealing though in the
> environment they lived in there was not much available to steal. They seem
> to be content living in poverty.
National Geographic did a report on them a few years ago, maybe 1.5
years ago. It indicates that they the Rroma don't aspire for much.
And they do steal a lot. The NG reporter actually got mugged by a
Rroma!
> I want to use this post to draw people into a discussion on another
> phenomenon closer to home. A couple of years ago a surveillance camera in a
> parking lot of a large department store somewhere in the South caught a
> scene of a young mother physically punishing her daughter for some minor
> transgression. She then shoved her into an SUV and drove away. The police
> got the license plate number from the store security and a nation wide
> manhunt was on the way. The woman then saw herself on TV and freaked out.
AlexV, that case was widely known in the USA. She was a Traveling
Irish, or something to that effect. Supposedly, this community are
independent of Rromas. I visited the Traveling Irish's website, and
it seems to indicate that they are independent of the Rromas.
> They drift from place to place stealing from stores frequently using their
> kids as a decoy, diversion or as accomplices counting on the fact that the
> police would be unlikely to prosecute a juvenile.
I heard about this. Also, they are talented scamsters, supposedly.
They sell things which don't work.
> According to the papers they spend winters in a couple of communities in the
> United States where they socialize, make matrimonial arrangements and trade.
> They are highly materialistic and the status of a person depends on the
> number of cars they have and other signs of success. Keep in mind that
> everything they have has ostensibly been somewhere stolen.
I didn't get the impression that they are materialistic. Instead, i
thought that they were wanderlusters and didn't care for materialism.
They only cared for today and not worried about tomorrow.
>
> Here I want to get back to the real gypsies, those who live in Russia. What
> is interesting is that they do not seem to have "an accent" when speak or
> sing in their tongue. OK, they migrated from India where the phonemes in
> many related languages are so different from the European languages,
> including English that this fact is difficult for many of them to overcome
> even after years of living in the West. It handicaps them with a heavy
> accent. The Russian and in general East European Gypsies have phonemic
> spectrum close to the surrounding languages, not the languages of the places
> they came from. This is quite an interesting subject. Any literature on
> this?
Can't help you hear. Although I do know that many Rromas living in
the USA like to compare their words with Hindi/Punjabi language.
There are many similiarties since both languages are Indo-Iranian.
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